A Progressive Congregation

"A Progressive Congregation"

from "Epistle to the Presbyterians", September 2002

Perhaps you noticed in our community awareness message in the Post-Journal this week inviting community members to our special “September 11, 2001” worship that we characterize First Presbyterian Church as “a progressive congregation in Jamestown, New York.” What does that mean? What does it mean for us to be a “progressive congregation”?

Fred Plumer, a Christian pastor now working on the west coast, writes in partial answer to this question:

The progressive church is a response to God’s truth as revealed in Jesus and other enlightened teachers and prophets. It is a response to the slow unveiling of the secrets of the universe that continue to expand our understanding of this awesome and often unfathomable creation. It is a response to the ongoing scholarship that has exploded our understanding of biblical times, the historical Jesus, and the development of religions in general. I always have assumed that the progressive church is both a response to and a search for truth. In other words, a progressive church is based on an acceptance of a progressive faith. (Plumer, “Progressive Faith vs. the Illusion of Control”)

Theologian Karl Rahner has written that “…what is called knowledge in everyday parlance is only a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled…hence, the question for the knower is this: which does he or she love more, the small island of his or her so-called knowledge or the sea of infinite mystery?” Sadly, my experience of the larger church over the years has indicated a preference for “the small island of its so-called knowledge.” This knowledge has hardened over time into doctrine, creed, and dogma so that, for many churches, being a Christian is, before all things else, a matter of believing the “right things” that have been passed down the generations.

But a progressive church, while grateful and cognizant of its history and heritage, seeks to look and move forward. Like Jesus did. When the rules and doctrines of his Jewish faith got in the way of showing love and compassion for people, Jesus revised his thinking about what it meant to live in the name of God. So, for instance, he broke the longstanding prohibition against healing on the Sabbath. He turned that creed upside down. “The Sabbath was made for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath.” Jesus also re-framed the criterion for acceptable religion: In Luke 18: 9-14 (read it!) it was the humble tax collector who was closer to God’s heart than the pious Pharisee. By eating with sinners and those considered by temple law to be unclean, Jesus overturned the “official” image of God’s beloved community as being a “fellowship of the devout” by saying, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” and by befriending, in the presence of her accusers, the woman charged with adultery: “Let anyone among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” Jesus’ progressive faith did not sit well with those ensconced in religious and civil authority who pronounced it sacrilege, but his courage in living it all the way to the cross revealed the way of God to us. It reminds me of a statement George Bernard Shaw once made: “All great truths begin as blasphemies.”

A progressive church is more concerned with how people treat each other than with the way people express their beliefs. Or, as the famous New England preacher Henry Ward Beecher once said, “The essence of Christian faith is to love God and to love one another. Christianity is to be lived, not believed.”

A progressive church takes the Bible seriously, but not always literally. I like the way a Lutheran bishop put it in 2001 when he was arguing for the ordination of lesbian and gay persons I that denomination. He said, “Sometimes the gospel must override the Bible.” In other words, a progressive church does not engage in bibliolatry. It is almost always possible to find in scripture a verse or two that will support any of our prejudices or points of view, but we must allow the whole sense of the gospel of God that Jesus lived and proclaimed to be the arbiter and harbinger of our beliefs and actions. Because the Word of God “is living and active” (Hebrews 4:12), we must be vigilant in listening to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church today.

A progressive church seeks to break down barriers between peoples, nations, and religions. A progressive church honors the earth itself and treats it as a living “being” to be treasured and cared for and not as a dead object to be abused and pillaged. A progressive church does not equate God and country. A progressive church is willing, like Jesus, to risk its own life for the sake of its neighbors and world.

Alas, “progressive churches” in our community seem to be few in number. It may be unnerving at first to be different than the churches our friends attend, perhaps different than the churches of our former years. Do not fear! We are not yet all that we want to be as a church, but we are journeying as faithful pilgrims along the gospel path as we seek more and more to follow Jesus the (Progressive) Way.

I am glad to be making this uncommon journey with you. I just read today that ninety percent of people who come to a church for the first time come at the invitation of friends who accompany them. There is much to commend this church. The large number of e-mail notes and letters I received this summer from people in our community and across the nation who have found our website convinces me more than ever that we have a lot to offer people who are seeking a credible, relevant, wonder-filled encounter with the God of the universe and who want to live their faith in meaningful ways in this world, in this life. Now is the time for you to be bold in committing yourself anew to this sojourn with God and with this church, and to inviting your friends to join you/us. We cannot abandon the Christian faith to churches mired in the past who refuse to count the mind, as much as the heart, as a gift of God. “First Presbyterian Church- A Progressive Congregation in Jamestown, New York.” See you in worship!

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